A Government Accountability Office report, “Homelessness: Actions to Help Better Address Older Adults’ Housing and Health Needs,” released October 9, includes data showing that about 138,000 older adults (55+) experienced homelessness on a single night in 2023. Of these, about 46% were unsheltered and about 54% were staying in emergency shelters, transitional housing programs, or safe havens.

Gathered as part of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) annual point-in-time count, the numbers show that of the 138,089 older adults experiencing homelessness on one night in January 2023, 98,393 were 55 – 64 and 39,696 were 65 and older. This information from 2023 is the first year that HUD’s point-in-time count explored in greater depth the age of those counted. (Historically, the data’s been divided into those above and those under 24 years of age.) LeadingAge had advocated to HUD and the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness for years that these data be collected so adequate resources and policy solutions can be garnered to address needs.

Read more on the report, which was requested in 2022 by House Committee on Financial Services Chair Maxine Waters (D-CA) and Senate Special Committee on Aging Chair Bob Casey (D-PA), to look at the number of older adults experiencing and at risk of homelessness, the housing needs prevalent amount older adults experiencing homelessness, and federal strategic planning and agency efforts to address homelessness among older adults, here.

On September 23, the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness released the first homelessness prevention framework from the federal government, Ending Homelessness Before It Starts. The framework emphasizes the importance of proactive prevention through a collaborative, cross-system response. This response includes communities’ resources, services, and programs, like affordable housing programs and income support, that can support people in maintaining safe and stable housing, preventing homelessness, and navigating housing challenges without someone ever needing to enter the homelessness response system.

“Although these universal programs require significant resources and political will to implement and maintain, they go a long way toward ensuring everyone has what they need to access safe, stable, and affordable housing,” the framework says. The framework emphasizes these types of services and resources while noting that the homelessness response system is intended to serve as a last resort, rather than the first response, as it is not designed to meet all the housing needs in a community. Communities should keep three goals in mind when considering their homelessness prevention strategies: first, to identify people who are at risk of homelessness and help them stay in their home or quickly settle into a new one; second, to tailor the type and level of resources based on need; and three, to scale programs appropriately. As more and more older adults experience homelessness, aging services providers might use the framework to understand how they might be part of their communities’ efforts to prevent homelessness.

Read the framework here.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) released an August 2024 brief outlining strategies for Continuums of Care (CoC) and coordinated entry systems (CES) to understand how to access Medicaid funds for supportive housing assistance for people experiencing homelessness. States increasingly look to use Medicaid to fund housing services, including to support pre-tenancy and tenancy-sustaining services; the brief outlines best practices across multiple states in aligning screening tools and eligibility processes to better connect people experiencing homelessness with health care and stable housing.

HUD recognizes that housing-related services are available in a small subset of states and for very targeted populations and encourages state housing authorities to connect with Medicaid Agencies early to optimize programmatic success.

On August 8, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced a new set of policy changes that will help expand assistance for veterans under the HUD-Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) Supportive Housing (HUD-VASH) program, and improve their access to supportive housing developments. Veterans experiencing homelessness often receive VA benefits as a result of an injury or illness that was acquired or worsened during military service.

Before this change, these benefits were considered income when determining eligibility for certain supportive housing developments—causing some veterans to exceed the income threshold for these programs. HUD’s policy changes will help more homeless veterans with service-connected disability benefits gain access to these housing developments.

In an August 2024 report from the National Alliance to End Homelessness, researchers document how the nation’s homeless population is growing as the homeless response system is overwhelmed by a constant stream of new people. A record-high 653,104 people experienced homelessness on a single night in January 2023, a 12.1% increase over the previous year.

In 2023, the first year HUD collected data on people older than 55 experiencing homelessness, in part after LeadingAge advocacy to do so, the report says 20% of all people experiencing homelessness were older than 55, totaling 127,707 older adults who experienced homelessness in the U.S. and representing 13 out of every 10,000 older adults in the U.S. “While older adults are less likely to experience homelessness compared to other age groups, the number of older adults in the US is growing. They have specific vulnerabilities that call for increased attention and resources,” the report says.

Using HUD’s worst case housing needs data, the report says that 34% of older adult renters spent 50% or more of their income on rent in 2021, “higher than any other age group.” Of all age groups, renters aged 75 and older were the most likely age group to be severely housing cost burdened, the report says. Severely cost burdened households spend more than half of their incomes for housing. “Providers also often lack the resources needed to adequately serve older adults, such as accessible shelter beds or higher levels of medical care. The existing housing stock, too, is frequently inaccessible for older adults,” the report continues.

LeadingAge is proud to serve on the Alliance’s Aging Advisory Group and works closely with the Alliance to preserve and expand resources to solve homelessness among older adults.

On June 28, the Supreme Court ruled that subjecting people experiencing homelessness to penalties for sleeping outdoors is not “cruel and unusual” punishment. The Supreme Court’s decision upholds a local ban on outdoor sleeping in public spaces by people without shelter, even when no adequate shelter resources are provided.

The ruling was announced just a day after a Congressional Subcommittee advanced a 7.3% cut to funding levels for the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for the coming fiscal year.

LeadingAge is deeply concerned with the impacts of the decision, and we call on local governments to utilize proven homelessness interventions rather than criminalization. Older adult homelessness is the fastest growing type of homelessness in America, and our country’s older adults are in urgent need of housing resources.

Read more about the case and the potential impacts here.

A new report on the rise of homelessness among older adults (50+) in California, “Toward Dignity: Understanding Older Adult Homelessness,” found that 41% experienced homelessness for the first time after age 50, older adults experience longer episodes of homelessness than younger people, and Black Californians are over-represented among California’s homeless older adults, among other findings. The report details findings regarding 50+ year old people from research conducted between October 2021 and November 2022, by staff from the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative who administered 3,200 questionnaires and conducted 365 in-depth qualitative interviews with adults experiencing homelessness throughout California to better understand who experiences homelessness, pathways to homelessness, experiences during homelessness, and barriers to regaining permanent housing.

See previous UCSF Benioff research here. LeadingAge relies on such data to advocate for the significant expansion of HUD programs, including the Section 202 Supportive Housing for the Elderly program, to address the nation’s shortage of affordable senior housing.

The Social Security Administration (SSA) published a final rule on April 11, “Expansion of the Rental Subsidy Policy for Supplemental Security Income Applicants and Recipients.” As LeadingAge urged, in comments submitted jointly with the National Alliance to End Homelessness on the SSA’s 2023 proposed rule, the SSA will make uniform across the U.S. a policy heretofore only available to people in seven states to not count informal rent help from family and friends against SSI benefits. This will leave more money in the pockets of the lowest income people and, we hope, slow rapidly increasing homelessness among older adults.

According to a January 25 report from the Joint Center for Housing Studies (JCHS) at Harvard University, America’s Rental Housing 2024, a record number of 22.4 million renter households spent more than 30% of their incomes for housing—and 12.1 million renter households spent more than 50%—for rent in 2022.

Read the full LeadingAge article.

On December 15, HUD released a report, 2023 Annual Homeless Assessment Report: Part 1: Point-in-Time Estimates, detailing findings from the January 2023 Point-in-Time Count (the Count). The Count, conducted nationwide on a single night every January, provides HUD with a snapshot of the number of individuals in shelters, temporary housing, and in unsheltered settings.

More than one in five people experiencing homelessness on a single night in 2023 was aged 55 or older. More than 98,000 people experiencing homelessness were aged 55 to 64, and almost 39,700 people were over age 64. Nearly half of adults aged 55 or older (46%) were experiencing unsheltered homelessness in places not meant for human habitation, according to the report.

After advocacy from LeadingAge and others to do so, beginning in 2023, communities were asked to collect additional information on the ages of people experiencing homelessness during the Count. Instead of a single category representing all people over the age of 24, as was the case before the 2023 count, five additional categories were used to provide more detail on the ages of people experiencing homelessness. These categories were 25-34, 35-44, 45-54, 55-64, and 65 or older. The January 2023 count documented 650,000 people experiencing homelessness on a single night in January 2023, a 12% increase from January 2022’s Count.

“Homelessness is solvable and should not exist in the United States,” HUD Secretary Marcia L. Fudge said in a statement. LeadingAge is working to prevent and end homelessness for older adults by advocating for Congress to rapidly expand the supply of affordable senior housing. Older adults are not immune to homelessness; HUD reports earlier this year documented, between 2019 and 2021, a 73% increase in chronic homelessness among older adults and a 10,000 person increase in older adults living in shelters.

LeadingAge commends the National Alliance to End Homelessness for urging federal officials to expand data collection on homelessness among older adults. Together we urged the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness to improve the collection of data on older adults experiencing homelessness in annual Point-in-Time Counts.

In a new paper, the Alliance urges HUD to periodically produce an ad hoc report solely focused on older adult homelessness, which could offer a deeper analysis of the population than the current Annual Homeless Assessment reports.

The Alliance also recommends that the homeless services sector pilot new ways to incorporate Activities of Daily Living questions into their service models. Age-related declines can impact the accessibility and sustainability of housing solutions and ADL assessments should inform individual case planning and policy. Read the Alliance’s recommendations here.

LeadingAge’s Linda Couch, VP of Affordable Housing Policy, shares insight into the growing homelessness plaguing low-income older adults in the United States—and how we need to address it.

Older adults are the fastest-growing age group of those experiencing homelessness, composing nearly half of the homeless population, according to an October 2023 Department of Health and Human Services HHS report, “Addressing Homelessness Among Older Adults: Final Report.” And the number of older adults experiencing homelessness is expected to triple by 2030, the report says.

Read the full LeadingAge article for more details on the report.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) released 2021 data in the 2021 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report (AHAR) to Congress Part 2 on August 21, 2023, showing “the number of elderly people with chronic patterns of homelessness increased by an alarming 73%” between 2019 and 2021. Nearly 10,000 more people aged 65 and older experienced sheltered homelessness in just two years.

Read the full LeadingAge article for more details on the report.

HumanGood, a California-based provider operating life plan and affordable housing communities in six states, is providing affordable housing for older adults currently or formerly experiencing homelessness. HumanGood’s Welcome Home initiative sets aside a percentage of affordable apartments by implementing an owner-adopted admissions preference for individuals experiencing homelessness, in keeping with HUD guidelines.

Read the full LeadingAge article to learn more about this initiative.

The National Alliance to End Homelessness has issued its State of Homelessness: 2023 Edition. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) data used in this report (from the 2022 Point in Time Count) do not allow the report to capture homelessness among older adults, which homeless services and housing providers and other research shows to be on the steep rise. The report does shed important light on the number of people left homeless because of the lack of affordable housing.

According to the report, the number of individuals experiencing homelessness and the number of chronically homeless individuals were at an all-time high in 2022. According to the Alliance, available data also demonstrates that race and ethnicity are key determinants that impact who will become homeless and the type and depth of rehousing barriers people will experience.

The Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Subcommittee on Housing, Transportation, and Community Development held a hearing on March 8, 2023, “The Federal Strategic Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness.” Witnesses were Jeff Olivet, Executive Director, U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, and Dr. Richard Cho, Senior Advisor for Housing and Services, HUD. Olivet called homelessness a “life-and-death public health crisis” and said that, over the course of a year more than 1.2 million people experience homelessness.

A new report from the National Alliance to End Homelessness, “Connecting Older Adults to Housing: Examining Disparities,” sheds light on how older adults exit homelessness. The report, published in January 2023, analyzes a dataset of more than 64,000 people aged 25 and older to assess how homeless service systems are meeting the needs of older adults exiting into housing.

See LeadingAge’s key takeaways from the report here.

The U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness released “All In: The Federal Strategic Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness” on December 19, 2023, a multi-year roadmap “to create the systemic changes needed to end homelessness in our country.” The plan establishes an initial goal to reduce overall homelessness by 25% from the Point-in-Time Count in 2022 by 2025. To drive progress toward this ambitious goal, USICH will develop implementation work plans and begin putting the strategies in the plan into action during this fiscal year.

Read the full LeadingAge article for more details.

Research from the University of California San Francisco looks at mortality rates of older adults experiencing homelessness. Researchers found that people who first became homeless at age 50 or later were about 60% more likely to die than those who had become homeless earlier in life. Of course, homelessness was a risk for everyone. Researchers found that older adults who remained homeless were about 80% more likely to die than those who were able to return to housing.

Read the full LeadingAge article for more details.

House Committee on Financial Services Chairwoman Maxine Waters (D-CA) has asked the Government Accountability Office to review “the aging population in America, their risks of experiencing housing insecurity and homelessness, and federal programs that target older Americans and help prevent homelessness.”

Read the August 2, 2023, letter here and the full LeadingAge article here.

“Over the next decade or so … demographic shifts will result in the older adult homeless population increasing significantly: nearly tripling by 2030. People of color are and will continue to be overrepresented in this population,” Ann Oliva, the chief executive office of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, at a July 19, 2022, hearing of the Senate Banking Subcommittee on Housing, Transportation, and Community Development, “Opportunities and Challenges in Addressing Homelessness.”

Almost 600,000 people experience homelessness on any given night in the United States, Subcommittee Chair Tina Smith (D-MN) said in her opening statement. The biggest factor in rise of homelessness is the severe shortage of affordable housing and the lack of housing supply, Chair Smith said.

Read the full LeadingAge article for more details on the hearing.